film

Watertown is hosting the first Snowtown Film Festival this weekend. It's one of the few indoor events in a series of winter activities that are part of this month’s Snowtown USA festival. Fourteen films with winter themes will be screened in a full day marathon this Saturday. A majority of them are written and directed by local filmmakers.

A film production company that’s moved to central New York is scouting locations across the region for movies it plans on filming by the end of the year.

The Film House, which will be the first tenant in the new Central New York Hub for Emerging Nano Industries in Dewitt, plans on starting to film the sci-fi picture “The Opium Wars” in September. The company's president Ryan Johnson says right now they’re scouting for places like exterior farms, a run-down bar, and a big hangar with a "Mad Max" feel. At the same time, Johnson says they’re also working on their next movie.

Couples trying to conceive may be surprised to learn that many sexual lubricants act as spermicides, reducing their changes of pregnancy.

Several commercial products and household oils are harmful to sperm and can slow the movement of sperm, according to a study conducted through the andrology laboratory at Upstate Medical University. We'll discuss the study and it's implications with the director of andrology services, Kazim Chohan, and Dr. Renee Mestad.

Then, Dr. Antonia Culebras explains how to reduce stroke risk for people with irregular heartbeats.

A futuristic movie called “The Opium War” will be the first feature film produced through the Central New York Hub for Emerging Nano Industries in DeWitt. A seven to eight week shooting schedule will start by the end of summer.

Film House Chief Operating Officer Michael Haggerty has already been in the Syracuse area scouting locations for the film, which he says is "about a female astronaut who crash lands and is offered a smuggling job that will pay for her ship's repairs.”

The movie business is coming to central New York. With the help of some state tax incentives, the nation’s first nano film school, along with a film production company, will set up shop in suburban Syracuse.

"Now who would have ever figured? Hollywood has come to Onondaga. Right, you would have never guessed, but it has..."

Human rights issues -- including the ongoing civil war in Syria -- are being highlighted at different film festivals in Syracuse this fall.

Abdulwahab Tahhan left Aleppo, Syria 11 months ago. He was living in a refugee camp in Turkey when the documentary "The Suffering Grasses" was filmed. That film was screened at the ArtRage Gallery in Syracuse Tuesday night and Tahan spoke with the audience via Skype from the U.K. where he now lives.

The state budget includes a provision aimed at boosting the film industry in upstate New York. The new tax credit creates a two-tiered system that includes a 10 percent credit for productions using particular upstate locations.

Western New York has missed out on being the setting for a major motion picture, but Republican state Senator Patrick Gallivan hopes the loss of the movie “Draft Day,” starring Kevin Costner, will help push along a bill that would offer tax credits for films to be shot in New York state.

As they await Gov. Andrew Cuomo's decision on whether fracking will go forward in New York, dueling pro- and anti-fracking filmmakers held screenings and promotions for their films in Albany. At one point in their visit, the two sides confronted each other in the halls of the Capitol.